


look at me (and see me again)

by moonrise31



Series: once, twice, and again until it's over [7]
Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: F/F, mimo is alive and well i promise, title stolen from like ooh ahh lyrics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-04-01 11:23:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13997247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonrise31/pseuds/moonrise31
Summary: In which Mina likes her friends, and also hates them --- and likes one friend in particular a whole lot more.





	look at me (and see me again)

"Minari," Sana says, light voice slipping among the notes tinkering out of Mina's headphones. Mina takes them off, sliding them down to hang around her neck as the older girl continues, "are you mad at Momo?"

Sana still has a smile on her lips, but the glint in her eyes gives Mina pause. Because Mina has seen Sana mad only twice since she's known the other girl. And she knows that even though she's Sana's "cute dongsaeng that must be protected at all costs", Momo is Sana's _best friend_ , and it's this distinction that sharpens Sana's question like a knife hidden underneath a mound of cotton candy.

"Um." Mina blinks. "No, I'm not."

Sana seems to accept the response, throwing an arm around Mina's shoulder to pull the younger girl closer. Her bottom lip juts out into her signature pout. "Okay. It's just...you two don't seem to talk as much anymore."

"We do," Mina protests. "I sat next to her at dinner yesterday."

Sana hums as she recalls the night before, when the nine of them had gone out to Nayeon's favorite restaurant as a last hurrah before the final exam crunch hits. "Right, you did." Sana pulls back, cheerfully patting Mina's cheek. "Sorry for interrupting. You can go back to studying now."

Mina returns the smile, waiting until Sana's attention is sufficiently diverted by cell biology before letting out the breath she'd been holding.

-

Mina knows that she has a crush, of course. It's the reason she's stupidly aware whenever Momo walks into the same room, a prominent prickle forever in Mina's periphery. It's how she remembers that she sat next to Momo at dinner the other night, and how she knows that Momo and Chaeyoung are thinking of starting a vlogging channel together even though she'd been objectively focused on her animated conversation about Corgis with Tzuyu -- 

"-- And you're _always_ staring at her with this lovesick expression," Jihyo continues, throwing her hands up in the air. "It's like you'd jump into the sun and suffer a horrid burning death if she asked you to."

Unfortunately, Jihyo knows that Mina has a crush, too.

Mina rolls her eyes. "I like Momo-unnie a lot, but I'm not an idiot." Jihyo only gives her a look, and she sighs. "So I have feelings for her. It's not like I need to do anything about them."

Jihyo stares at her. "What do you mean? Of course you do."

"I do?" Mina echoes. 

"Well, yeah." Jihyo raises her eyebrows. "Don't tell me you're planning to just sit back and make puppy-dog eyes at her from across the table for the rest of our lives."

"It probably won't last that long," Mina tells the other girl, ignoring how the lie clings to her tongue. Then she shrugs. "The unnies are all graduating next year, and might not even still be in Seoul by the time we also finish university. So there's plenty of chances for my crush to wear off."

Jihyo laughs. "Mina, it's not going to go away with time. You know all of us are gonna stay together forever, right?" 

And in the end, it's Jihyo's pure conviction on that particular aspect of the entire problem that makes Mina also chuckle, resigned. "Yeah. I guess you're right."

-

Fact one: Nayeon and Mina share the same apartment.

Fact two: Nayeon is, at times, a morning person. And as for Mina -- 

"Myoui!" Nayeon bursts into Mina's room, not even sparing a glance at the door when it slams into the wall behind her. 

"Fuck," Mina grumbles, tongue loose because she's been awake for all of two seconds. She rolls over and fumbles for her phone, squinting at the glowing screen. Once her eyes focus, she flops back onto her pillow with a whine. " _Unnie_ , it's barely six in the morning."

"Yeah, and I have questions." Nayeon plops onto the bed, slapping a firm palm against the lump under the blankets where she guesses one of Mina's legs is. "So get up."

Mina throws an arm over her eyes. "Questions?"

"Yeah." Nayeon waves her phone, screen still open to a message thread. "Such as, when are you gonna ask Momo out?"

Mina doesn't need to read the name to know who's responsible for her rude awakening. "Jihyo owes me so much coffee for this."

"Yeah, whatever." Nayeon brushes away the thought of all possible consequences with a careless flick of her wrist. She tosses her phone aside -- a rare occurrence that Mina is not fully capable of appreciating at the moment -- and leans closer with an eager grin. "For the record, I think it's absolutely adorable."

"Noted," says Mina. "Now can I go back to sleep, unnie?"

"Of course not," Nayeon scoffs. "First, you need to tell me everything. And then, we have to plan your grand confession."

"Plan?" Mina deadpans.

"Obviously." In a flash, the phone is back in the older girl's hands. Nayeon taps at the screen a few times before shoving it in Mina's face, making the younger girl go cross-eyed. "I don't get my dates just based on my impressively good looks, you know. But with this easy nine-step program, there's _no way_ you can go wrong."

-

If any of the other girls notice Mina pointedly ignoring Nayeon at lunch later that day, they find it too hilarious to say so -- until Mina gets cornered by the three youngest before she can escape to history class.

"So." Chaeyoung raises her eyebrows and nudges Mina in the ribs with a playful elbow. "Momo-unnie, huh?"

"We're cheering for you." Tzuyu raises a slow, deliberate fist. "Fighting!"

Mina gapes. "Not you, too."

"It's kind of hard not to notice," Dahyun admits. "You didn't say anything all of lunch, but the one time you smiled, it was because Momo-unnie made some dumb joke about asparagus."

"It was funny," Mina retorts.

"It wasn't," Tzuyu immediately informs her.

"Hey, no need to be embarrassed, unnie." Chaeyoung reaches up to pat Mina's back. "Momo-unnie's hot. We get it."

Dahyun nods. "Totally. Her abs are _definitely_ one in a million."

"I suddenly have to go," says Mina, and quickly slips through the space between Chaeyoung and Dahyun. She walks briskly away, cheeks flaming as she tries to get rid of the sudden visual now seared into her brain.

-

"Do you _want_ to tell her?" Jeongyeon asks over the mess of sheets on the table masquerading as her calculus homework.

Mina blinks as she looks up from her own neat pile of solved equations. "That's sort of the whole problem, I think." 

Jeongyeon shakes her head. "What I mean is, you shouldn't confess just because everyone else says you should, no matter the reason. And you definitely shouldn't do it through Nayeon's sixty-nine-step program or whatever load of crap she's been promoting." Jeongyeon cracks a smile. "You should only do it if you feel like you should. You know?"

"Right." Mina nods once, twice. Silence falls between them, and Jeongyeon picks up her pencil and a new sheet of paper. She gets through two lines of algebra before Mina says, "But how?"

Jeongyeon glances over, and then shrugs. "Maybe just, 'I like you, Momo'?"

"Oh." Mina ponders the concept. "That's it?"

"That's it," Jeongyeon confirms, and boxes her final answer.

-

According to Sana, Momo's response to Mina's confession was probably something stupid, along the lines of, "That's cool. I like jokbal!" And only someone as angelic as Mina would be able to tell that that was a "yes" to the first date.

Jihyo's personal opinion is that Mina was adorably awkward, and Momo was adorably dumb ("Why does everyone always assume that?" Momo still wants to know, but her demands always fall on deaf ears). Yet somehow, Mina's fingers finally threaded themselves through the spaces between Momo's, and that's all that really matters in the end.

Nayeon doesn't ever directly comment on the subject. Instead, she sends a lot of candid photos to the group chat of the two cuddling on the couch, Mina's head tucked comfortably under Momo's chin and Momo's arm wrapped comfortably around Mina's waist. Nayeon always makes sure that the pictures she sends are completely edited with heart stickers and lipstick kiss emojis -- and a filter that's _almost_ as soft as what she melts into whenever she sees them together.

From time to time, Chaeyoung and Dahyun still argue over who gets credit for finally being the one to push Mina to confessing. Jeongyeon will just sigh from where she's sitting on the sidelines, hiding a smile as Tzuyu gives her a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. 

Mina, meanwhile, keeps the memory of how Momo's face lit up at the mumble of words Mina had been certain she would have to repeat. That was just before Momo leaned closer, breath brushing Mina's cheek like the touch of summer; and the hug the older girl pulled her into afterwards felt safe and full and _bright_.

So Mina knows that she wouldn't have had it happen any other way.

**Author's Note:**

> Poke me on Twitter (@moonrise31) if you'd like!


End file.
